====== Gopher ======

**Year:** 1991\\
**Port:** 70\\
**Created by:** Mark McCahill, Farhad Anklesaria, Paul Lindner, Daniel Torrey, Bob Alberti — University of Minnesota

===== What It Is =====

A hierarchical menu system for navigating directories and text documents. Faster and simpler than FTP. Navigated via ''gophermap'' files — each entry is a type prefix, display text, path, and server address, tab-separated.

===== History =====

Built in secret to route around a design-by-committee campus information system. Released without official approval — and then the rest of the Internet found it. Briefly competed with the World Wide Web as a genuine equal in 1991–1993.

Lost when the University of Minnesota announced licensing fees for commercial use. Tim Berners-Lee had declared HTTP and HTML free forever. Within two years, the race was over because of one institutional decision about money.

The name is a triple pun: the University of Minnesota's mascot (Golden Gopher); the act of burrowing; and "go-fer" — someone who fetches things on request.

===== It's Not Dead =====

Veronica-2 Gopher search index statistics:

^ Date ^ Servers ^ Unique Selectors ^
| January 2026 | 411 | 5,856,111 |
| August 2025 | 432 | 5,254,158 |
| June 2025 | 296 | 5,113,382 |
| February 2024 | 323 | 5,113,957 |
| November 2020 | 358 | 5,973,552 |
| January 2020 | 395 | ~4,500,000 |
| 2007 | 86 | 740,000 |

Maintained entirely by people who choose it, with no corporate backing.

===== Gophermap Syntax =====

^ Prefix ^ Type ^
| ''i'' | Info line (display text, not a link) |
| ''0'' | Plain text file |
| ''1'' | Directory / submenu |
| ''h'' | HTML / URL link |
| ''9'' | Binary file |

Fields are tab-separated: ''type+display\tpath\tserver\tport''

**Important:** Gophermap files require real tab characters. Vim's ''.vimrc'' detects ''gophermap'' filenames and sets ''noexpandtab'' automatically. See [[terminal:editors:vim|Vim]].

===== Blogging: Phlogs =====

A **phlog** (Gopher + blog) is a blog maintained in Gopherspace, updated via a gophermap. [[tilde:tools|TTBP on tilde.town]] publishes entries to both HTML and Gopher simultaneously.

The ''public_gopher/feels'' directory is synced to the gopherhole.

===== Local Setup =====

Files live in ''~/gopherholes/'', synced to tilde.town via [[terminal:tools:rsync|rsync]]:

<code bash>
./bin/gopher-build.sh    # copies content to gopherholes/output/
./bin/sync-to-tilde.sh   # syncs to tilde.town
</code>

Hosted at: ''gopher://tilde.town/1/~brennan''

===== See Also =====

  * [[protocols:finger:start|Finger]]
  * [[protocols:gemini:start|Gemini]]
  * [[protocols:smallweb:clients|Clients]]
  * [[terminal:editors:vim|Vim]] (gophermap tab handling)
  * [[tilde:tools|tilde.town Tools]]
  * [[protocols:start|Return to protocols]]